Created by
Michael Jai White, Byron Minns, and Scott Sanders
Black
Dynamite (the movie) was one of the best parodies I’ve seen in a long
time. Taking the low-budget style and
plotline of a blaxploitation movie, it was ridiculous, fun, and hilarious. So I was really excited to hear about an
animated series coming to Adult Swim.
Sadly, Black Dynamite (the series) just doesn’t live up to what I was
hoping for.
The
general plot of the series is the continuing adventures of Black Dynamite’s
(Michael Jai White) team, consisting of Bullhorn (Byron Minns), Cream Corn
(Tommy Davidson), and Honeybee (Kym Whitley).Rather than look at just one of
the first four episodes, I’ve decided to bring them all up here. Strangely, the first two feature members of
Black Dynamite’s team getting involved with Michael Jackson and the porn industry,
with Dynamite himself only being a side character. The third episode involves Dynamite being
behind on his taxes, so to get the money he needs, he offers to take Richard
Pryor to his famous Sunset Strip gig.
And the fourth is a Christmas episode, where Dynamite and OJ Simpson go
to the moon (honestly, even if I filled in the details on that, it makes about
that much sense).
The
first thing I want to point out just from this information is how purely random
the episode line-up seems to be. The
first two episodes don’t even star Black Dynamite and give very little
introduction to who these characters even are.
If you didn’t watch the movie, you’re going to be lost. The other big thing is how celebrity-focused
the show is. And sadly, this just makes
the show feel dated, despite premiering this summer. Jokes about Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson feel
old. It’s meant to take place in the
70s/80s (I’m honestly unsure on the exact time period, and I doubt the show
cares very much), but that doesn’t suddenly open the door to drag out jokes
that people no longer laugh at.
I
also can’t help but feel that animation was a poor choice for this. Part of what made the movie so good was the
pure blaxploitation quality of it. Not
only did the film look old, but goofs were either made or left in. It felt like a bad, low-budget movie. So changing from live-action to animation
takes out all of these qualities. It
looks good and stylish, and adding in goofs would just look odd. I know Adult Swim has live-action shows, so
it’s weird that they didn’t do that for Black Dynamite.
The
overall episode quality is mixed. The
best is probably the second, where Bullhorn’s constant rhyming ends up making
him a porn star. It pushes some limits,
the plot is fairly ridiculous without going as over-the-top as some of the
other episodes do (two of them feature aliens), and it has plenty of good
jokes. It does steal the movie’s best
joke, which made me worry the series was going to rely on this. But none of the
other episodes seem to really be interested in doing it, so I assume it’s just
a one-time thing. The worst was the
third. Part of the problem is that it
uses so much language…that gets censored out.
At some point, I was getting a headache from the constant bleeping. I assume that this’ll be better on DVD, where
it will hopefully be uncensored. Even with
that changed, though, I still feel like they wasted a plot of the IRS trying to
kill Black Dynamite to focus on Richard Pryor.
Maybe it’s one of those things that’s hilarious if you’re a big fan of
him. I don’t know.
Black
Dynamite is just this sad case of wasted potential. Watch the movie, skip the series.
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